Andor isn’t your grandparents’ Star Wars – and that’s okay!
A NO STORY SPOILERS discussion on how Andor isn’t your average, or even expected, Star Wars story and why it doesn’t need to be.
I’m going to say this right up front: I absolutely love Andor (the latest Star Wars series on Disney+), partly because it’s NOT Star Wars in a way that’s definitely not gone unnoticed by both casual and some of the more “intense” corners of fandom. I’m an old school Star Wars devotee from 1977. It’s in my blood. I don’t simply watch or read or play Star Wars stories – I step inside them and become a part of them, even if it looks like my nose is in a book or pressed up against a screen.
While I know there are some people who simply exist to complain, there are some people who feel they have legitimate gripes with this new series. “It’s slow.” “It’s boring.” “It’s not MY Star Wars!” No. It’s not. This might be hard to hear, but maybe not every Star Wars story is for everyone. I’m thinking that what disappoints some people is that they’re expecting things from Andor that it was never meant to provide. What makes this series great is that it doesn’t have to be the Star Wars of old, told with the same types of characters, the same story arcs, with the same flourishes of artistic vision that George Lucas or Dave Filoni brought to the big and small screens.
This is ground level drama, performed with the quiet yet pulsing deliberation of the best tv dramas being offered today. You don’t even need to know anything about Star Wars to appreciate this series. Knowing the names of background characters and planets may help to put some things in perspective, but it’s not necessary. Where the Mandalorian cribs heavily from samurai and cowboy classic stories, this series so far borrows pieces from heist stories, prison break stories, political thrillers, and even George Lucas’s THX-1138 a bit for good measure. It has the trappings of the Star Wars galaxy, but weaves a completely different story from what we’ve experienced before.
It’s no mystery that the trilogies are all about myth and magic and Big Destiny with Big Heroes fighting Big Villains. Andor does just the opposite by slipping between the cracks of all of that to find the lowly common people fighting to survive and sacrifice everything invisibly so that the Skywalkers of the galaxy can someday get the medal.
Think of Owen and Beru Lars.
Given what we know now from the Obi-Wan series, they’re fighters. They didn’t simply get set on fire when stormtroopers came knocking on their door asking about a pair of droids. Their devotion to protecting Luke is probably why the stormtroopers killed them while looking for the droids rather than sending them off to a prison planet like Narkina 5, as seen in the most recent episodes of Andor. Had Ben Kenobi not been watching over Luke and had the droids not led the son of Anakin away from the farm at just the right moment, he and his aunt and uncle likely would have been sent to a prison like that, with Luke never knowing his abilities or his destiny.
Owen and Beru are on the same level culturally as Cassian Andor and those of us who aren’t adept warriors or great leaders in the time in which we live. There is no Big Destiny for them or for many of us. But their actions, whether raising the secret son of a Sith Lord or fighting against all odds to get the Death Star plans into the hands of a certain rebel princess, will likely never truly be given their due. Andor digs into the dirt of the forgotten folks who would never be heralded as heroes, but performed unknown acts that would change the course of history for the galaxy. Nobody in Andor is doing “great deeds”. They’re performing necessary deeds to live another day. But it’s these little actions that make it even remotely possible for a Skywalker to save the galaxy years later.
Villains or heroes or neither?
What makes this show even better is that it doesn’t just focus on the hero, Cassian Andor, whose name and face would never be remembered for all time; it also focuses on the “villains”. I put “villains” in quotes because they aren’t simply the “bad guys”. These are people with passions and ambitions to drive them to maintain their status so as not to fall under the heel of the Empire like the people of the planets they oppress. No matter how they justify their actions, all it really takes is the privilege of being able to look away or cling to their justifications as something “good” or “right”. Giving us this perspective balanced by the often compromised actions of the rebellion’s many adherents that we get to know, both old and new characters, provides a nuanced picture of a very real world that isn’t simply painted in black and white.
In the trilogies, we certainly have heroes tempted by the clearly designated dark side, by Evil, and villains struggling to hold onto their hatred and isolation when aspects of love and truth tug at them, often saving them in their final moments, or in the case of Anakin Skywalker, the loss of which drives them further from the light. Those are classic Campbellian hero’s journey tropes that are the DNA of the Star Wars Saga as a whole. It’s myth built upon even older myths that go back thousands of years on our own planet. Andor doesn’t deny these things exist. The show doesn’t paper over them and invalidate everything we know about the galaxy far, far away. It just says that not everything is so clear cut. Sometimes the heroes and villains are neither of those things wholly, but people making hard decisions in the face of impossible odds or simple decisions when their actions can be justified, regardless of the cost to others.
Reality Bites.
For those of us who have lived and breathed the Star Wars Galaxy for as long as we can remember, we would love to be Luke or Han or Leia Obi-Wan or Chewie or even R2-D2 (my personal favorite character). But reality tells us that most of us live in a world much more like Andor’s. There is nobody with a lightsaber coming to save the day when Cassian’s story reaches its climax. And that’s okay. In fact, if a Jedi did pop up at some point, it would be a betrayal of the entire concept behind the show.
This is the beauty of a Star Wars story that doesn’t feel like classic Star Wars, but still clearly exists in the same universe. It has the ability to surprise even though we know where the reluctant rebel “hero” ends up when it’s all over (see Rogue One). I even love the atmospheric, anti-bombastic music. There is barely a smidgen of John Williams in this soundtrack. I dare you to find it. And yet the score still sets the tone wonderfully for every futile, desperate, or distraught moment beautifully.
Yes, there is very little joy in the many stories found in Andor, even less hope for our characters. But it will soon become apparent that without them, there would be no hope that we take for granted in the 1977 film. It’s a stark contrast to the films and I love it. Star Wars can take many forms and tell many different types and styles of stories. It is modern mythology after all. But instead of giving us stories about Odin and Thor, Zeus and Hercules, we’re given the make or break tales of common Vikings or Greeks without whom the adventures of the gods mean nothing. They don’t exist or have purpose in being gods or heroes without the common man.
Star Wars doesn’t need to be a Hero’s Journey tale set on the big screen.
Star Wars can be the story of a hermit, a scoundrel, an assassin, a princess, or a farm boy. It can be told as a space opera, or through innovative animation styles, with humor, horror, or even as a terse drama putting a face to the people of a galaxy living under the bootheel of self-righteous bureaucrats and faceless soldiers, minus the wizards, knights, or super-weapons.
Despite regular jaunts to Black Spire Outpost on Batuu at Disneyland, this is a galaxy I want to visit even more now, because it feels so much more real. Yes, I’d be terrified to be a nobody under the reign of the Empire, knowing what I know about the highest levels of power and realizing I’m a small speck of dust in an endless galaxy that cares nothing for who I am or what I want or need. But with that in mind, even if we might not want to be Andor, who wouldn’t want to step up and join the rebellion?